Shanxi Offensive Operation

The Shanxi Offensive Operation was the first major offensive operation carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. From 3 to 29 July 1937, hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops stationed in Manchukuo launched a massive invasion of northern China and crushed the Shanxi Clique, ruled by warlord Yan Xishan. The Japanese also clashed with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang forces and Mao Zedong's communists, but they faced no significant resistance. On 29 July 1937, Shanxi surrendered to Japan, and it was annexed into the Japanese empire.

Background
In 1936, Japan was ruled by the stern imperialist Emperor Hirohito and governed by Prime Minister Keisuke Okada, a member of the Toseiha faction of the Imperial Japanese Army. The government was ruled by the Control Clique, and it also had elements of the fascist Kokumin Domei party as well. The cabinet was therefore inclined to favor nationalism and militarism, and Japan built up its armed forces on a massive scale. Throughout 1936, newly-created Japanese armies were ferried from Tokyo to Dalian in the Kwantung leased territory of northern China by Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's large fleet, and the Japanese massed along the Manchurian border with China, threatening their neighbors.

These neighbors were the Shanxi Clique, an autonomous region of China led by the Qing dynasty loyalist Yan Xishan and ruled by the "Protect the Emperor Society". The Shanxi Clique's army was small, and it was led mostly by anti-Bolshevik Russian and Baltic German emigres who had seen action in the Russian Civil War. However, this led to the Shanxi troops being drilled in the old-fashioned ways, and the Shanxi military lacked the same modern and professional quality that the Imperial Japanese Army possessed. The lack of modernization in the Shanxi army would ultimately prove fatal.

The road to war was inescapable after 5 January 1937, when Prime Minister Okada decided to remove the two conservative members of his cabinet, Armament Minister Machida Chuji and Security Minister Fumio Goto. He replaced them with military entrepreneur Kazue Shoda and Security Minister Keisuke Fujie, both Kokumin Domei members. Now, the fascist Kokumin Domei held a third of the government's seats, while the other two-thirds were controlled by the Toseiha expansionists. There was no more Minsei Party opposition to face, and the Japanese began to plan out the war.